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I want to make a small point, a protest if you like, which may be lost on some readers but which has been accurately captured by today's editorial in The Daily Telegraph.

Today, Prime Minister Blair effectively abolished the role of the Lord Chancellor. As Derry Irvine has arguably discredited the post, most people won't care, yet the Lord Chancellor's office represented one of the few remaining checks and balances against the threat of a dictatorship in a democracy with an unwritten constitution.

Lord Irvine

The independent House of Lords has had its teeth pulled through the appointment of 'political' Lords to replace stubborn and independently-minded heriditary peers and the Civil Service is now under the control of 'The Party' and has been since the first hours of this government coming to power. How long, I wonder, before people open their eyes and realise what is happening in our country. The House of Lords and the independent judiciary, represented by the office of the Lord Chancellor, were the people's only means of checking the ambitions of a monarch or a Prime Minister in a struggle which goes back to Thomas More and Henry VIII.

Are we happy then with the idea of a one party state with absolute power over the passage of legislation and control over the judiciary. If we are not, then I'm afraid it's too late to complain.

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